On a six month assignment in Sydney. Purchased a Compaq Presario A900 before I left the US for about $650 at Best Buy (on-line banking & bill payment). Seemed like a bargain: Windows Vista Home, Intel Pentium Dual-Core processor, 1.6 GHz processor speed, 2 GB SRAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, 17 inch monitor, webcam, blah - blah - blah.
Worked well for just under two months. All of a sudden, it will not allow connection to the internet (ethernet cable to modem). Bought a new ethernet cable -- wasn't the problem. Called my ISP help desk -- got me connected, but not sure what happened. Immediately ran spyware which detected a few things.
Now the system is freezing after being on-line for five minutes (absolutely no response to the mouse nor keystrokes). So I tried to do a restore using F11 ... now it is freezing after 30 seconds for being on.
Can't return it to Best Buys (I'm in Australia) ... cannot reach anyone at Compaq support-Australia.
Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.